The cherries had rotted on the branches, or the robins had eaten
them, for Silas would not give them away. Rose and her mother would
smuggle a few small baskets of cherries to Sylvia Crane and Mrs.
Barnard, but Silas's displeasure, had he found them out, would have
been great. "I ain't a-goin' to give them cherries away to nobody,"
he would proclaim. "If folks don't want 'em enough to pay for 'em
they can go without."
Many a great cherry picnic had been held in Silas Berry's orchard.
Parties had come in great rattling wagons from all the towns about,
and picked cherries and ate their fill at a most overreaching and
exorbitant price.
There were no cherries like those in Silas Berry's orchard in all the
country roundabout. There was no competition, and for many years he
had had it all his own way. The young people's appetite for cherries
and their zeal for pleasure had overcome their indignation at his
usury. But at last Silas's greed got the better of his financial
shrewdness; he increased his price for cherries every season, and the
year after the tavern closed it became so preposterous that there was
a rebellion. It was headed by Thomas Payne, who, as the squire's son
and the richest and most freehanded young man in town, could incur no
suspicion of parsimony. Going one night to the old tavern to make
terms with Silas for the use of his cherry orchard, for a party which
included some of his college friends from Boston and his fine
young-lady cousin from New York, and hearing the preposterous sum
which Silas stated as final, he had turned on his heel with a strong
word under his breath.
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